


nothing here that's sacred

by OfShoesAndShips



Series: a stranger around here [3]
Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Gen, Stillbirth, Traumatic childbirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 21:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10051286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfShoesAndShips/pseuds/OfShoesAndShips
Summary: Joan's son dies.This is not the end of the story.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This fic contains, as in the tags, a traumatic childbirth and stillbirth. I've written around it more than I've written it, so it isn't incredibly graphic, but please be careful if that is likely to upset you.

John is born in late November, after a sudden, too-soon labour that comes with enough blood that Joan almost dies there on the table, splayed and screaming, her skin sticky-sheened. A storm heaves and drags outside, pounding the windows and screeching through the chimney, casting the kitchen in an odd, blue, blurring light. She can hear ravens screaming back at her and she sees, through half-closed eyes, feathers bursting from the doctor’s sleeves. The midwife’s hands are frozen and she howls at her touch, slipping back into the screaming of the blue-lit storm.

 John dies.

 

\--

 

Joan sits, alone, at the table she has almost died on. The storm has calmed some, although still the rain rings against the window panes like far-distant bells. The fire has fallen into ash, and she is cold and shaking but she can’t stand up, can’t move. John is – he’s lying in a little basket by her chair. She remembers, vaguely, screaming so loudly at the midwife when she tried to take him away that she laid him down. Joan’s eyes are dry. Drier, now, for the cold and ashen air. Joan shifts and winces, pulls her shawl tight around her.

Anne will be home soon, she thinks. She shouldn’t – she can’t –

She lets her hand fall, her fingers tracing the edge of the wicker. She closes her eyes. She feels tight, frozen, half-choked, her breath fighting in her lungs. She can’t feel him.

She shoves herself out of the chair suddenly, stands up and stumbles to the fireplace. She feels light, faint, almost trips over the lumps in the flags. She goes to her knees with a thud and relights the fire, her hands trembling so fiercely that the match flares out, flares out, flares out until finally it catches and flames crawl up the last of the logs. For a moment, she can’t stand. Then, quietly, she hears her mother’s voice in her ear, her mother who had done this ten times over, and she stands up.

She stands up, and she remembers a story she heard once, when she was holed up on the edge of the Pennines.

She walks over to the back door and shoves the bolt across. Then she pushes a chair beneath the handle, just in case, because the wind is beginning to rattle harder at the windows and she has to make sure. She goes across to the inside door and locks that, too. There is a pot of salt on the floor, swept out of the way when she was carried in, and she crouches to pick it up, gathering up as much of the spill as possible. She scatters the salt at the thresholds and watches as the wind stops trying to press in at the gap below the door. The last of the breeze pushes the grains a little, and then it falls still.

She throws open all the cupboards looking for candles and she lights every single one, from tall, pale ones she’d stolen from the cathedral to deep yellow, dripping, oozing stubs. The kitchen glows with its own warm light when she’s done, its own fierce, angry light. She grabs the bottle of brandy they’d tipped down her throat and slams it down in the centre of the table, angry now, loud now, her bloody skirts snapping as she moves. She storms over to the window and throws it open.

“Come on then,” she shouts to be heard over the rain, “Come on, come on, come on,” she says, pacing and pacing, _come on_ , _come on,_ until her voice is high and hoarse and even the fire, roaring now with her anger, cannot keep her from shaking, _come on, come on, come on_.

She has never begged. Never prayed. This, though, this comes close.

She turns to close the window and catches sight of a dark shape in the corner. It is thin, wisped like smoke. She kicks out a chair.

“You took your own damn time,” she says, and the shape seems to shudder. Since it won’t move to take the chair, she sits instead, “Near shouted York down calling, n’all.”

“I came, didn’t I?” John Uskglass asks, stepping out from the wisp of smoke. He looks about to perch on the table, then he must realise her blood’s still soaking into the grain because he moves and sits in the other chair. The one by John.

She doesn’t startle, but it takes effort. “Late.”

He raises his eyebrows, leans back. He’s awful pale. Looks as strung out as she feels.

“It’s been a long time,” he says, “I didn’t think anyone knew how to issue a summons any more,” he looks around, thoughtfully, “Crude.”

“Worked, didn’t it?”

“Just one way in and out,” he says to himself, “And a place at the table. What do these people think of me that they give me a pauper’s summons?”

“That an absent king in’t worth the effort.”

He rocks back in his chair. “Mouthy, in’t ye,” he says, polish slipping easily from his voice, “For a child.”

“I’m a woman grown-”

“You are a child,” he says, and he stands up, leaning over the table, “A meddling child with no idea of what you’re doing-”

Joan stands up and turns away from him, walking over to the dresser by the door. Behind her, he scoffs. Quietly, slowly, she opens the drawer and takes out Anne’s pistol.

Then she turns.

“My son were born dead this morning,” she says, her voice very tight, “I an’t got much left of my tether.”

He laughs, hard and sharp, and she puts the gun down on the table, by the bottle of brandy. She picks up the bottle and takes a long swig, then offers it to him. He tilts his head, gazes at her for a long second and takes it. He sips, and winces.

“Call this brandy?”

“Call yourself a king?”

“Will you let that go?”

She laughs, in a cold, dry kind of way. “You came,” she whispers, “I an’t thought you would.”

“But you called anyway.”

“A lady over Haworth way says you kept children safe from the fair ones.”

He sips the brandy again, then hands it back to her. “Your bairn weren’t stolen.”

 “Not by them, he weren’t.”

“There in’t a lot I can do against death, girl.”

She puts the brandy down with a soft click, then reaches out and grips the pistol.

“My name’s Childermass,” she says, very quietly, “And I saw you, when my boy were born.”

He stands up and smirks, reaches out and rests his hand against the muzzle to press it to the table. He’s close, very close, and on instinct she closes her left eye. He flickers out like a candle snuffed, until all that’s left of him is a thinning in England’s air. She could reach out and meet him in the Elswhere, she thinks.

That’s what the spell does, she understands now. Gives him a safe place to bring the Elsewhere into England.

“Look at me, Joan Childermass,” he says, and she opens her eye. She can almost see through him, at the very edges, and she leans in close.

“I have heard the land sing for you, and I can read the mourning in the wind, Uskglass,” she whispers, “And I know what it means when a raven alights on your childbed. My boy is something to you. And you will bring him home, or heaven help me I will bring all the world down on your head. I will tear England from your hands, and I will take it for my own.”

He smirks, bending down until he is just a whisper’s breadth from her. “And if I bring him home?”

“Then I will teach him how to return the favour.”

He strokes a finger down her cheek, scratching lightly. Blood, hot and stinging, trickles after him. “And when you're done,” he says, “You will pay your debt. You will die in front of your boy’s eyes, Joan Childermass.”

“If that is the price,” she replies, “Then that is the price.”

He smiles, long and sideways, a mirror of her’s, then runs the pad of his thumb over the cut. There is a whisper of cold wind, a smell like rain, and she feels it close.

They stare at each other for a long second, the world around them winding tight. The fire goes out, dousing them in darkness.

“The deal is done,” she hears the wind whisper, and when Joan’s eyes adjust the King is gone and the baby is crying.


End file.
